Moment of the Decade: #6 Confidence Vote Mayhem

If you missed it, I asked readers to nominate, then vote, on Canada's top political moment of the decade. Over the first two two weeks of the new decade, I'm counting down the top 10 vote getters. Next week, the top 5 (in alphabetical order) - Adscam, Coalition, Iraq, Merger, and Same Sex Marriage.



It had everything you could possibly want in a political thrill ride. Scandal! Backroom deals! A long time government fighting for survival! Sex! Tape recordings! A dying man with the fate of the country in his hands! A tie confidence vote!

When I first asked for nominations to this contest, Globe blogger Andrew Steele wrote the following to me:

Belinda crossing the floor and that confidence vote perfectly summarizes the knifes-edge reality of minority government that has become the dominant storyline of aughts political coverage. Process over result. Personality over policy. The Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff dancing on a speaker at the after party.

And the knife’s edge had never been narrower. As soon as a media blackout on Gomery Inquiry testimony was lifted, what had been tantalizingly described as “explosive” allegations were made public, and the opposition parties made it fairly clear they’d had enough.

Now, this was before people realized you could just prorogue the House if you were chickenshit scared of a confidence vote, so the Liberals postponed opposition days and Paul Martin went on TV and talked about his father. Paul cut a deal with Jack Layton who was in one of his “results for people” moods, thinking “Yeah, corruption is awful, and they wasted taxpayer dollars, but for a billion dollars, I’ll keep them alive. It’s what Ed Broadbent would want.”.

With a "too close to call" vote looming, Scott Brison stood up in the House every day saying “let Judge Gomery do his work” while the opposition heckled and screamed. The government lost a confidence vote, but it wasn’t really a confidence vote. Parliament was shut down. Either way, a vote was inevitable and everyone started doing the math and quickly realized that, holy crap, the fate of the government was in the hands of a few independents, among them Carolyn Parrish and David Kilgour. Ouch.

Then, in what may have been the single biggest jaw dropper of the decade, Belinda Stronach became a Liberal. Remember, this was before David Emerson and Wajid Khan (KHAAAAAAAAAN!) – it was a big deal. This was a woman who had helped bring about the Conservative Party merger just 18 months earlier. She was seen as a future Tory leader (by herself). And, oh yeah, she was dating Peter MacKay. Talk about a bad breakup.

So this changed the math, and it soon became fairly obvious that the fate of the government would come down to a maverick MP who was dying of cancer. The media pestered him. The Conservatives did some stuff which I won’t go into because, well, everyone who has gone into it has wound up getting sued.

So on May 19th, 2005, Chuck Cadman stood up, wearing jeans and chewing gum, and calmly forced a tie. Peter Miliken then, in a moment all young boys who hope to one day grow up and become speaker of the House of Commons dream of, got to cast a tie-breaking vote, to save the government.

It didn’t end there, because that set off the whole Gurmant Grewal fiasco which, if nothing else, allowed Tim Murphy to utter what is probably the quote of the decade, calling the Liberal Party “a warm and comfy mat with lots of fur on it”.

So, in he end, the Liberals survived. But, as Paul Wells’ book made clear, that survival likely gave the Conservatives the time they needed to ensure victory 8 months later.

So this moment left its mark. And when it comes to sheer popcorn politics, it was about as good as it gets.

Tale of the Tape

"The Liberal Party has been caught using a doctored tape to make serious criminal accusations against the Prime Minister of Canada on the eve of an expected election campaign," said Tory MP James Moore.

Woah. Did anyone else just have a weird flashback to the Gurmant Grewal incident which, I might add, happened the exact same time as the stuff being mentioned above. Weird.

Kady O'Malley offers a delightfully cynical run-down of the Tory tape tampering allegations here. It's a little curious that Moore and friends aren't willing to explain in what way or by who (whom? any grammar nazis out there who can clarify?) the tapes were edited. Moore was also surprisingly silent, even by Conservative backbencher standards, when asked if Harper actually said the big "financial considerations" line. Actually no, I don’t find that surprising at all, because if Harper hadn’t spoken those words, his immediate reaction when the tape surfaced would have been “what the hell? I never said that!”.

I imagine this is related to the libel suit against Dion but, even then, I don't really see why the Tories would want to resurrect this beast given that no one has really cared about this ever since the RCMP said they wouldn't press any charges. They’ve pretty much invited a few days of questions on what specifically was altered – and once they make that known, they’ll be de facto admitting that the rest of the tape's content is genuine.

Scandals Everywhere!

New York governor Eliot Spitzer is in hot water after spending $15,000 on prostitutes, in what Jon Stewart has dubbed ****gate:

The prostitute, identified only as "Kristen," worked for the Emperors Club. The group charged between $1,000 and $5,500 an hour and operated in New York; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; London, England; and Paris, France, according to court papers.

A thousand dollars an hour? Holy crap! I don't even think Julia Roberts charged that much in Pretty Woman.

Now, I generally find these sort of scandals more interesting when they involve gay Republicans but, as far as sex scandals go, this is a good one. It also, yet again, raises the question of why Canada doesn't really get any sex scandals - since the Munsinger Affair over 40 years ago, our scandals have generally involved things like charging chewing gum to an expense account.

But that's not to say we don't have scandals. The "please call it anything but NAFTAgate scandal" is now being investigated. This one probably won't turn into much of anything - I seriously doubt there was any intent from the PMO to destroy the Obama campaign. Worst case scenario is someone being a little too loose lipped and a scapegoat being fired (now, if that scape goat is Ian Brodie, then it becomes big).

The sleeper pick in March Scandal Madness right now is the Baird-O'Brien scandal (BO scandal?) which I will not comment on, because it seems everyone who comments on Tory scandals winds up getting sued.

And, that brings us to the big one - Cadscam. With shifting stories, and the Tories reluctant to flat out deny an offer was made, this one smells fishy. Greg Weston floats an interesting theory today but, regardless of the Tory explanation, there are two certainties they can't spin away:

1. Harper is on tape saying an offer was made.
2. Cadman's entire family are sticking to the "million dollar life insurance policy" story. And, considering his wife is running for the Tories, there is no logical explanation for her to be making this up.

I doubt anything will ever be proven so this won't knock him out, but those two facts above are going to leave Harper with a black eye on this one.

Blast from the Past

Chuck Cadman - there's a name we haven't heard in a while. In a time warp back to one of the most exciting and bizarre weeks in the history of Parliament, a new book ads to the insanity that was May 2005:

The widow of former B.C. MP Chuck Cadman says two Conservative Party officials offered her husband a million-dollar life insurance policy in exchange for his vote to bring down the Liberal government in May of 2005.

Unlike Mr. Grewal, Chuck Cadman wasn't in the habit of taping his private conversations so there's no firm proof, but Harper's comments in the book are...to put it midly...interesting. It certainly sounds like he was fully aware of the gist of the meeting, if not the specifics:

"Of the offer to Chuck," [journalist Tom Zytaruk] quotes Mr. Harper as saying, "it was only to replace financial considerations he might lose due to an election, okay. That's my understanding of what they were talking about.

"I don't know the details," he said. "I can tell you that I had told the individuals — I mean, they wanted to do it — but I told them they were wasting their time. I said Chuck had made up his mind he was going to vote with the Liberals. I knew why, and I respected the decision, but they were just, they were convinced there was, there was financial issues and, there may or may not.

"They were legitimately representing the party," Mr. Harper confirmed. "I said 'Don't press him, I mean, you have this theory that it's, you know, financial insecurity, and you know, just, you know, if that's what you say make the case,' but I said 'Don't press it.'."

A million dollar bribe sure sounds sexy but even minor compensation for "financial insecurity" in exchange for a vote would be blatantly illegal. And is Harper going to be able to come out and say that one of his own candidates is a liar? I'm not sure this will go anywhere but you can be sure that Harper will be answering some uncomfortable questions in the coming days.